“Come away with me. There is a world beyond all this,” he said urgently.
She wanted to but could not. “You are a rogue, Brother Blum, to tease me so. ‘Tis unbecoming in a virtuous man.”
“Consider this. We could leave tonight.”
“No!” she said, horrified. He was teasing, flirting, surely, she sought to reassure herself. Her life was here, mother, brothers, sisters. Her faith.
He bit his lower lip as if to take back words. “Then I will say no more, Catharina. But you, you…” He raised an instructing finger then touched it to her lips. “… remember me.”
He bowed and turned at the top of the hill where the road parted around the Square. She watched, milk and modesty forgotten as the flurry of morning activity reeled him back into the community. Already he was laughing again, greeting other Brothers, charming his way past Widows, Married Sisters, Older Girls, and other Single Sisters with as full a claim to him as she.
“I will remember you,” she whispered after him.
Of all the kisses he had stolen from her, she would remember the urgency of this last kiss the longest. Always he had awed her, a summer storm to her own spring showers. His reckless, daring nature scared and overwhelmed her. He was energy, and she, repose. Her way was quietude, and her path was simple.
Why would he single her out, meek soul that she knew herself to be? He must have kissed a dozen other girls. Any but the severest prude would have let him. But surely none was such a fool as she, to fall in love with Nicholas Blum.
At the stoop of his father’s home, he paused for a moment, then opened its herringboned green door, too large a man for it to frame him, and she watched him disappear inside.
2
DANVILLE, VIRGINIA, MAY 1796
Soft spring morning light streamed through the streaked windows of Nicholas’s room at the White Horse Tavern on the wagon road to Pennsylvania. He awoke to it with a pounding head, a queasy stomach–and a gasp of unaccustomed pleasure. His own. Callused feminine fingers threaded through the hair around his early morning arousal, which strained eagerly toward their touch.
“Morning, love,” the woman purred, her voice rich with amusement and desire.
“Mornings, too?” he asked thickly, astonished to find himself in bed with the woman who’d served him ale and stronger spirits last night until he … until he what? Evidently, everything, with tempting, luscious, brazen Mary Clark. For he was even more astonished at the direction her attentions were taking at this unseemly hour. He rubbed sleep from his face, remembering her bawdy, laughing seduction of him. His sober hesitation. His drunken weakening. He groaned. So he had yielded, as it seemed from her words, her touch, her expectations. What would it be like sober? He let his hands find her large breasts, her nipples already taut.
She whimpered with approval. “You didn’t know about mornings?”
He hadn’t known about anything. It was too damnably embarrassing to be a virgin ruined and not even remember. He hid that as best he could. “I’d guessed, but bedding a woman in one’s mind hardly measures up to the reality.”
She gave him a large, sloppy kiss, her tongue seeking his and demanding it join hers in play. He played, as she must have played with him throughout the night. But this time after they finished, he launched himself up to sit on the side of the bed, unwilling to leave, needing to go. Stockings, breeches, waistcoat, coat lay on the floor where she had thrown them as she stripped him.
He reached for a woolen stocking.
She plucked it from his grasp. “’Twould be fine if ye would linger, love.”
It would be heaven, he thought, his body weak with lassitude and his mind filling with guilt. But not regret. Men should marry young, younger than the Brethren allowed. And he should not have waited all these years. Been made to wait. Have vowed to wait, not knowing he was missing this … selig, bliss. Earthly, earthy bliss.
“I will be late. Days late.” He clenched his jaw against his desire for more of the pleasures that she offered. Trade in flesh, when he was headed north to learn to trade in goods. Plump feminine welcome, laughter, and experienced delights, for a coin. But not, he recalled, his coin. She had incited him, urged him, seduced him, she’d said, because he struck her fancy. Because, he suspected, he looked clean.
Sitting behind him on the edge of the bed, she wound her arms and legs around him. “Who would note a quarter hour’s more delay?”
Her nipples poked into his back, and her lower thatch of feminine hair, the first he had ever seen, tickled his buttocks. Her arms circled his ribs, and she lowered her hands to his happily exhausted privates. Her fingers dallied, fondling the aching stones he rarely handled but to bathe or to adjust them in his breeches.
He savored her skilled torture, her knowing instruction in the ways of love.
Drunk or not, seduced or not, he was well rid of his virginity. He had left Salem and the Elders’ strictures angry, humiliated, discontent. All that, and hunger, had led him to let go of a lifetime of celibacy. It seemed the only facet of his life that he could affect Those other markers of manhood-family, business, even a role in his community-evaded him.
He had regrets, sharp and secret Privately he admitted that his life was a miserable patchwork of unrewarded effort, mismatched vocations, and dreaded fresh starts. But he had the mind, the energy, and the ability to achieve something meaningful, something his father would approve, something his family would applaud. Something his wife could depend on. He was sure of it.
Again, Mary Clark’s practiced hands roused his ardor, banishing self-doubt and self-recrimination. He tried to return her caresses.
“In me, love, again. I’ll not see the like of ye this comin’ year.”
So Nicholas obliged her one last time, again finding the experience far superior to her sordid sheets. His erection fairly leapt inside her, and he spilled the last remnants of his innocence into her dark mysteries.
Afterward, she watched him dress, the barest quiver of her pouting mouth betraying her disappointment. In gratitude, he gave her a hug and kissed the top of her not-quite-clean, russet-colored hair. Then he tipped up her chin with a finger and gave her a chaste kiss. Union with a woman had proven wetter and faster and slower and more exhilarating than his most vivid imaginings. “Thank you,” he said sincerely.
“Ah, you’re welcome.” She gave a saucy grin. “I never had a Brother.”
Embarrassment heated his face, not for the first time in his extended frolic, but for the worst reason. Surely he was not the first man among the Brethren to stray.
“Never?” he asked. “What gave me away?”
The grin broadened, and he saw she had reclaimed her self-control. “The plainness of your dress. Besides, most of my virgins are fourteen.”
He shrugged and smiled, allowing her jest at his expense. It didn’t bother him she had guessed his innocence. It bothered him he had waited so long.
An hour later, he led his saddled mount from the lean-to that served as a livery. Mary Clark lazed at the tavern’s door, her skirt draped to disclose a dimpled knee. He swung up on the horse, determined to go on.
She sashayed over and rested a hand on his thigh. “The White Horse is always here, and me with it.”
He covered her hand with his. “I won’t forget.” But he wouldn’t come back. He would be too tempted.
“God speed you, Brother Nicholas. And may He bless that willing rod you carry in your breeches.”
He laughed at her bawdy retort and turned his mare onto the wagon road. His destination was a good fortnight away, if he pressed on. He was in no hurry, however. He had to recover his accustomed equanimity. Bethlehem and a return to celibacy awaited him. He had to think of Catharina and their future.
Belated guilt sloshed to the forefront of his mind. This foray into the sensual delights betrayed her purity, her gentle affection. But then his faith had betrayed him, too, into years of frustrating discipline. Into missing out on this … glory.
&nb
sp; Now at least, he would come to his bride a whole man, knowing how to please her.
Nicholas dallied three weeks along the Wagon Road, flirting to test his newfound ease with women but accepting no more invitations.
In Bethlehem at the very end of May, he surrendered his mount to the visitors’ livery with a gentle pat to her neck under her flaxen mane. He liked her, had requested her in fact, knowing from his days as a farrier that she would suit his temper. Half draft animal, she was just large enough for his great size. He didn’t mind her marish quirks, her moods and sometimes sullen balks. He had always had a way with creatures of the feminine persuasion. With four younger sisters and a bevy of admirers, he had better.
But for the three hundred miles of his trip north, he had stared at that mare’s mane, the exact color of Catharina’s blonde tresses. And thought of how he had betrayed her. He was good at slipping into trouble and reasoning his way out. But it was proving unexpectedly hard to reason his way around his lapse into forbidden carnal pleasures.
Mary Clark had given him the wildest night of his life, and the best morning after. His hours with the kind-hearted whore only sharpened his resolve to hurry back to his innocent, intended bride, better prepared to introduce her to the pleasures of a sanctified union. So he told himself. But he knew the scripture.
If Paul said better to marry than burn, he meant better not to fornicate. Nicholas was a Single, not a Married Brother. Still, he had not taken a monk’s vows. Having tasted a woman’s delights, how would he endure a long course of celibacy?
At the Brothers House, he unpacked and walked out to find Georg Till’s store. The novelty of Bethlehem dispelled his worrisome thoughts. The town was larger, busier, and more enterprising than Salem. He strode up the hill, heart pumping in anticipation. Here was a town suited for projects and endeavors. Rounding a corner, he saw Till’s store, twice the size of Traugott Bagge’s store at home in the backcountry. Big enough for him to exercise his enterprise and his ambition, he realized, his spirits lifting.
He straightened the lapel on his road-rumpled coat, ducked his head to enter a low door, and found himself, face to back, with the tiniest, trimmest female he had ever encountered.
3
BETHLEHEM, PENNSYLVANIA, MAY
Abbigail Till perched on a stool and stretched her feather duster high. But it would not reach the top two shelves. She sneezed. Pine pollen was everywhere this spring. With her father and Brother Huber out of town and few lulls between customers, she had little enough time to clean. A thin film of yellow dust coated every pot, book, and buckle in the store. She stretched and sneezed again.
“I came to speak to someone in charge.” A mellow, amused voice broke her concentration.
She gave a start, then quickly polished off the highest shelf that she could reach. Apparently whoever owned that voice could not imagine a woman in charge.
But she was. Today, in her father’s absence, and often enough when he was here. After her mother died, Abbigail had given up her life as an Older Girl at the Sisters House to manage her ailing father’s household and his store. Her responsibilities in the shop, added to the endless hours of woman’s work, had made her much the stronger.
And much the stranger. An outsider among a community of outsiders. A rare woman among the Brethren Sisters, one who dealt regularly and comfortably and in English with men and goods and money.
She set the duster down, hitched her skirts, and stepped off the stool to stand before the man with the amazing voice.
Her gaze went up and up and up, to the lionish, handsome head of a burly, well-formed golden giant. A man no longer young, though perhaps younger than her spinsterish self. Intensely cobalt eyes twinkled with mocking self-knowledge.
Women always cater thus to me, they said to her, carelessly, fecklessly.
Her breath caught. She smoothed the fine laine fabric of her best shop dress, the nervous, unaccustomed gesture surprising her. She was at her best with overbearing strangers. She straightened to her full four feet, ten inches tall.
“’Tis I you seek, sir. Sister Abbigail Till. I am in charge in my father’s stead.”
The blond giant smiled and bowed seamlessly, gestures so becoming and gendemanly that Abbigail’s heart tripped in appreciation beneath the stiff boning of her bodice.
“Nicholas Blum, Sister Till, at your service.”
Oh no, she thought, not this–this male pulchritude and overweening confidence-to add to her burdensome duties. The son of her father’s friend had arrived to take his place in her shop.
Oh yes, she thought again. All this power and energy at her disposal.
“You are late, Brother Blum, by a week.”
How could a man look gracefully abashed yet unrepentant too?
“The wagon road from North Carolina is no short trek in springtime.”
“We have mud here as well, Brother Blum, but we do not close the store. Besides,” she added, eyeing his riding gaiters, “you obviously rode a horse. Do they mire in mud?”
His eyes glinted wickedly as he shifted from strict courtesy to engage her. “Would you believe that my horse threw a shoe?”
She braced herself against the power of that wicked glint. “And that there are no farriers betwixt here and Salem? Try again, Brother Blum.”
He grinned, a slash of a dimple gracing his left cheek. “Bowed a tendon?”
She softened to his undeniable beauty, his unflappable charm. But ruling him required her not to yield. She glared back. “’Twas you, was it not, who passed an hour hence on the great sorrel at a forward trot?”
“You have me there.”
“The point is that we did not have you here. And my father–whose gout retards his activity-has gone into Philadelphia with our shop assistant, leaving me to mind the store alone. Green though you are to trade, he had rather have sent you.”
Despite her sharp tongue and grudging welcome, Nicholas appraised the tiny woman before him with a newly awakened sensibility to what a Sister might look like under her plain dress. Full high breasts crushed beneath a confining bodice, two hands’ span of a waist awaiting his embrace. For the first time, he fully understood the Brethren’s prohibition against bawdy encounters like his with Mary Clark. Sister Abbigail Till was glossy as a blackbird, tiny as a wren, and twice as bossy.
And he still wanted to kiss her senseless.
His fatigue from the road lifted under the little wren’s tart sallies. Rising to meet her challenge, he banished her wrath with his patented charm. His boyish grin had earned him half a dozen stolen kisses from Sisters more intent than Abbigail on girding themselves in maidenly belts of honor.
“Ah, and I had rather have gone,” he said. “’Tis my entire purpose here to travel and learn the finer points of trade.”
She straightened so that the crown of her head came just to the top button of his rumpled waistcoat. “Trade begins in the shop. You will assist me here.”
Her tone of customary command was unbecoming in a Single Sister, and it puzzled him. He had thought that she was enjoying their crisp exchange.
She raised a straight, sensible brow. “You are ready? You have unpacked? At the Brothers House, we arranged for a bed for you.”
If her lips stumbled over bed, he would not allow himself to notice.
“I have indeed unpacked but am hardly fit to mind the counter in this.” He gestured toward his dusty outer coat, teasing her stiff and proper self to awareness of his body.
She averted her eyes.
For a fraction of a second, he gloated.
“My traveling clothes are filthy,” he admitted soberly. “But I thought it best to come straight away-”
“As well you should have done,” she interrupted briskly.
Then as if emboldened, her gaze slid up and down his seriously begrimed clothes. He remembered himself, unclad and randy, under the dissimilar scrutiny of the buxom tavern wench. The generous tavern wench. Gott im Himmel, what a tangle he had made for hims
elf this time, to have such thoughts intrude with a Sister he barely knew.
“The clothes you are wearing will do nicely for the task at hand.”
He let an obliging nod ease his tension. Sister Abbigail was so … unsparing, so … resistant, so … angry that she must perceive him as a danger. What could he say to set things right?
“I came to work for you, Sister Till, and your father.”
She smiled. It was not a bad smile. Pretty, pearly teeth. Then she turned on her heel and conducted him out back to a waist-high pile of aged manure mounded up beside a garden.
“If you would be so kind as to spread it, I could plant my beans before my father comes back.”
This was a job for Older Boys, or Little Boys not yet apprenticed, he thought with quick temper. But he managed a courteous smile. He had been apprenticed several times himself and knew apprentices faced lowly chores. But he hadn’t traveled all the way to Pennsylvania to begin at the bottom again.
She put a well-worn shovel in his hand, the right size for her but too small for him by half. “That should be a good afternoon’s work. Mind you spread it evenly. I should hate for Brother Huber to find fault.”
“Brother Huber?” he asked, at a loss. Brother Till was to teach him the ins and outs of trade.
“He is our assistant in the shop when my father’s gout keeps him abed and I must mind the household.”
Nicholas started to protest his ignominious assignment but thought better of it. Perhaps this was all a misunderstanding, and she was having a feminine bad day. Perhaps Brother Till hadn’t fully informed his daughter of his plan to instruct Nicholas in the art of trade.
On the other hand, he thought glumly, perhaps this lowly servitude was exactly what the Elders intended for him.
What had his resless spirit gotten him into this time? And how was he to endure bending his will to the sting of this wasp?
Sister Till darted back to the store, an unconscious flick of her skirts revealing a flash of ankle he could not afford to notice.
His Stolen Bride Page 2
